


Lucky

by theorangewitch



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Excessive use of flashbacks, Gen, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Pre-Canon, extensive use of flashbacks, my stake in the caleb backstory game, spoilers for episode 18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-09 13:28:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14716973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theorangewitch/pseuds/theorangewitch
Summary: Five years before meeting the Mighty Nein, Caleb Widogast wasn't Caleb Widogast. In fact, he was barely anyone at all.





	1. Colors

**Author's Note:**

> In this fic, I will be adhering to two theories: That Caleb isn't his real name, and that when he "broke", it was partially magical in nature. Also, I will cling to Gayleb until Liam puts it in the ground.

Most of what he knows of this place are its colors. They’re all he can adequately absorb, and they’re so few and far between. The walls are white. His uniform is white. The orderlies’ uniforms are white. So he takes in what snatches of color he can find. The blue of the sky, the green of his attending orderly's eyes, the pink of the flowers that bloom outside his window every spring, the dusty orange of his hair when it hangs in his face, the gold of his keeper’s robes.

The man is his keeper, because that’s what he does. He keeps him, nothing more. His keeper stands over the orderly’s shoulder while she bathes him, or asks him questions. His keeper stares, stone-faced, at him when he doesn’t respond. His keeper watches him whenever he leaves the room, never saying anything, only watching. Only keeping. He hates his keeper. He knows emotions almost as well as he knows colors, because they’re all that’s left of him. He hates the way his keeper just watches, never doing anything, but with an unfathomable contempt. He also hates his keeper for another reason; a reason he can’t truly process. He likes his orderly. He likes her smile. He likes that she has green eyes, and he likes that he gets to see their color up close. He likes that she’s kind to him, or she seems to be, even though he can’t process what she says to him or about him. He knows kindness when he sees it. He also knows cruelty. He has been shown so much cruelty, and delivered it as well. There is something cruel about his keeper, though he doesn’t know what.

He recognizes his keeper. He’s met him before. Before this place, before the white walls and faded lights. Before he was broken. He didn’t know him well, and he certainly doesn’t bear any affection for him. But he has a strange, emotionally-tinged memory of him. He has that of no one else here.

 

 

But there was one time, one time someone who wasn’t his keeper or another of his keeper’s ilk who came to visit him. One time. On that one time, two men walked in. Well, one was a man. The other was something between a man and a boy. The older man he hated. He wore the same robes as his keeper, but he hated this man even more than his keeper. He hated him so much that he froze the moment he walked in the door, and refused to look the man in the eye. But then the younger man stepped in, and he looked up again. A strange, warm, pink and gold feeling washed over him, the likes of which he hadn’t felt since entering this place, but that he remembered from before. _Love_ . He’d loved the young man, and he felt that feeling revive in him, like a person back from the grave. He opened his mouth. Sometimes sound came out, though nothing he nor anyone else could understand, and he wanted it to now. Some way of communicating with the young man, something, something, _anything_.

The young man stopped and stared at him, his mouth open and a look of abject horror furrowing his brow and widening his eyes. At first he’d been happy at the young man’s arrival, but now he wanted nothing more than for him to leave. He couldn’t see him like this, he _couldn’t_.

The older man stepped forward and addressed him. People addressed him occasionally, but most had stopped expecting a response. “Hello, Felix,” he said. “Don’t you want to greet your old friend?”

He couldn’t understand what the old man said, but he hated his tone.

“What happened to him?” the younger man asked, staring at the older man.

“He is broken, Eodwulf,” the older man replied simply.

The younger man approached him cautiously. “Felix? Do you remember me?” he asked.

He simply stared at him, heartbreak and sorrow the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since his coming here radiating through his chest.

“Can you understand me?” the younger man asked. His eyes were warm, and golden brown, and so full of hurt that he could hardly stand it.

He knew that the younger man was speaking to him, he knew. But he couldn’t take in what he said, and he certainly couldn’t respond. He reached his hand out, and the younger man pulled away like he was a rotting corpse.

“Hhhh, haaaa,” he said, and it was more of a pained exhale than any semblance of speech.

“Felix, I’m sorry,” the younger man said.

“Do not pity him,” the older man snapped. “You know what he’s done. This is what happens to people like him. He was the brightest student at the Academy. And now, he is _broken_.”

“Hhhhh,” he moaned again. He knew his voice was undignified, but he couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Unnnhhh.” Tears were beginning to well up behind his eyes, stinging the insides of his eyelids.

“I get it, okay?” the younger man said. “I see him. Can we go?”

“Are you sure you don’t wish to stay a little longer?” the older man asked. “He doesn’t get many visitors, and he seems happy to see you.”

“Let’s go,” the younger man said with finality. And then they were gone.

As they walked out the door, he gave out a wail, long and hollow and keening, as tears began to stream down his cheeks. He reached out towards the door, trying to force himself to get up and go after them. To chase them down and hold the younger man. But he couldn’t.

 

 

He tries to forget about that visit. But so little happens to him, day in and day out, that he cannot help but let it resurface. Sometimes, he dreams about it. Dreams about being able to respond to the younger man’s questions and the older man’s taunts. To say what he could only think in that moment. He wakes up from those dreams sweating, an unbearable ache in his chest.

On good days, he is allowed to eat in the cafeteria with some of the other patients. They are strange, though no stranger than him. Some of them are quiet, the way he is, and spend the long hours simply gazing out the window. Some are loud, though. They stand in the middle of the cafeteria and yell things that even the orderlies, the normal people here, seem to find odd. Some are violent, or at risk of being violent, because they are kept in chains the way criminals are. And some seem normal, or relatively so. They talk with the orderlies the way the orderlies talk with each other. But everyone, no matter what affliction they bear, has a lostness behind their eyes that he can sense even through the fog that is his mind.

On that day, a woman sits next to him in the cafeteria. The first thing he notices about her is her color. Her skin is dark as fertile earth, and her hair is black, sprinkled with salt and pepper gray around the roots. She has a richness that even her white clothing and the white walls and the washed out lighting cannot overcome.

“You look lost,” she says. She must be one of the loud ones, or else she is new here, because everyone else knows not to bother talking to him.

He stares down at his food. It is white, like everything else here, and it is bland, like always. He pushes it around his plate with his spoon.

She touches his face, and pushes it up so that he stares her in the eye. And her eyes are even brighter and richer than the rest of her. They are a deep brown like her skin, a beautiful mahogany, like expensive wood. Something in them glimmers, too, something that is not characteristic of a patient here. Something genuine, something alive. She makes a funny face, crossing her glimmering eyes and sticking out her tongue. There is a strange tattoo on her tongue: three wavy lines, painted in green and outlined in gold. He can’t help but smile. It has been a long time since he smiled.

The woman puts her tongue back in her mouth and shakes her head. “You are not meant to be here. I can tell that much. Neither am I, for that matter. I mean, I have my off days, but that should be my business, shouldn’t it? But I’ve only just arrived. You’ve been here far too long.” She looks around, eyeing each of the orderlies who keep watch over the cafeteria. She then spots his keeper. “Is he yours?” she asks, nodding towards him. Recognizing his lack of understanding, she points to his keeper, and then to him. Not knowing what else to do, but sort of catching her meaning, he nods. “Well, I don’t know how I’ll be later, so I need to do this now. But he can’t be watching. He’ll only pull me away.” The woman drums her fingers on the table, thinking. “We’ll need a distraction,” she announces.

She stands up and walks over to a patient sitting at another table, one of the loud ones. He’d been yelling only a few minutes earlier. She sits down across from him and says something, then walks back over. “He’s got us covered,” she says. A moment passes, and then the man across the way climbs up on top of the table.

“WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!” he yells. Everyone in the room starts and looks up at him. “THE END IS NIGH! THE BETRAYER GODS ARE RETURNING AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!” Then he begins to screech like an owl.

He looks over at his keeper. His keeper’s attention is fully on the man on the table. The woman notices this too, and turns his face back to hers and claps her hands onto his cheeks. They are warm and soft. “This should do the trick,” she says. Her palms begin to glow with a soft, grey light.

She pulls her hands away from his face. Sympathy hangs in her eyes. “I know that you can’t understand me now, but you will later. This may hurt. This may hurt _a lot_ . A lot has been done to you. It’ll take a few moments to come back, and when it does, it’ll come back _fast_. But I’ve done this before. It’s always worth it, always.” And then the woman starts to shake, her hands trembling in her lap like leaves in a storm. Her eyes widen, and then she leans forward and grabs him by the wrist. “I’m sorry, dear, this is a bad time. I told you that I didn’t know how I’d be later, but please, hang on, I’ll come back for you.” Then she pulls away and stares, shocked at her shaking hands. “No, this is—is this me or—?” And then her eyes roll back into her head and she collapses onto the table.

And then Felix’s mind explodes. The fog races away from his thoughts as if blown by a strong wind and he can suddenly comprehend what the man on the table is yelling. He can pick out each orderly as they try and grapple the man to the ground, and he can name them all. _Benoit, Lovise, Aramand, Pryce_. He knows his own orderly’s name. He knows that the tree that grows outside of his window is a chestnut tree. He’s eaten the nuts before. He remembers the visit from Trent and Eodwulf, and he knows why it hurt so badly. He knows what time it is, he remembers that they gave everyone a small bowl of dried cranberries for breakfast, he remembers burying his hands in the dirt of his family’s garden and tracking mud through their house. He takes in the woman who’s lying on the table in front of him, and he knows that she saved him. He didn’t learn her name, and he wonders if he ever will.  She said she’d come back for him, but will she?

He blinks. The cafeteria is so bright and loud. How could he never have noticed that before? He rubs his eyes. For the first time in over a decade, Felix is awake, and he is alive. And the first thought that he has for himself is that he must escape.


	2. Sorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like being sad about my own characters. Case in point.

Felix’s eyes dart around the room. The orderlies have wrestled the man who was standing on the table to the ground and are escorting him out. Felix knows this man’s name now: Oblio. He’s heard others say his name before. They’re escorting Oblio out of the room, and he’s weeping softly and muttering. Felix’s keeper’s eyes are back on Felix, and so Felix turns quickly back to his food. He has to pretend like nothing’s changed. He taps his thumb on the table and stares at his food, keeping an eye on the woman with her head on the table. There’s still twenty minutes or so until he goes back to his room. He’ll be alone there, and it’ll be relatively quiet. He’ll be able to think. He finishes his food. It’s disgusting, and he knows this even better now than he did before, but he’ll need his strength for his escape. He knows that he’s wasted away these past eleven years. He can’t exactly counteract that yet, but he’ll have to try.

And then the woman’s eyes flutter open. Felix watches as she slowly pushes her head off of the table. She’s not shaking anymore, but she’s breathing hard, as if she’s just been running. She turns to Felix, her expression confused. “Can you help me?” she asks.

Her tone is so mournful that Felix has to bite his tongue to prevent himself from responding.

She places her hands on either side of his face again, though this time no magic flows through them. “Can you help me?” she repeats.

Felix looks her in the eyes, and the glimmer is gone from them. The spark of life and awareness that was present when he first saw her has vanished, and is now replaced by that same lostness that every other patient has. Felix places his hands on her face and holds them there. He doesn’t say anything; he only looks at her. She doesn’t say anything else either; she only looks at him.

The bell rings for lunch to end. The patients begin to file out of the cafeteria, some escorted by orderlies, some moving on their own. But Felix stays with his hands on the woman’s face, and she stays with her hands on his, until he feels a tap on his shoulder.

It’s his orderly. He knows her name now, and it’s Brenna. She’s a half elf woman with brilliant red hair and intelligent green eyes. “Come along Felix,” she says. “Lunch is over. I’m happy you’ve made a new friend, but you and Miss Sorrel have to go back to your rooms now.”

 _So that’s her name_ , he thinks, _Sorrel._ It sounds a lot like “sorrow”.  

Another orderly appears and takes Sorrel by the hand and leads her away from the table. She gazes forlornly back at him as she exits the cafeteria, and Felix wonders if bright-eyed Sorrel will come back the way she said she would.

Brenna chats with him as she leads him back to his room. She’s treated him a bit like her diary ever since she became his orderly roughly three years into his stay here. And why wouldn’t she? He couldn’t understand her. He never responded. He knows that it gets boring here, so why not dump all of her hopes and troubles onto him?

Today Brenna talks about Sorrel. “She’s new here,” she explains. Felix could guess that much. “She was caught just roaming the countryside. She would always seem normal at first, and then her sanity would seem to dissipate, only to return again. She was arrested for worshipping a non-sanctioned deity, but when they found out about her condition, they sent her here. I don’t like them treating this place as a prison. It’s not. It’s a center of healing—a hospital, for crying out loud! They shouldn’t be sending criminals here. But what do I know? I’m just an orderly. Sorrel seems alright, though. She seemed to like you, Felix! I’ve never seen another patient talk to you so much. If she’s feeling alright later, maybe she’ll be at dinner. I know you can’t really make friends when you can’t talk or understand anybody, but maybe you two could, I dunno, hang out.”

His keeper is following behind them. Felix hears him give out a little huff of annoyance at Brenna’s asinine chatter. He knows his keeper’s name too: It’s Marten, Marten Widogast, one of Trent Ikithon's many assistants/lackeys. Marten must hate this job almost as much as Felix hates Marten. But if it’s up to Felix, if he comes up with a good enough plan, Marten won’t have to worry about this job for much longer.

They deposit him in his room. “If you want to go to the rec room, or outside, just tap on Marten’s shoulder,” Brenna says. “He’ll find me, and I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

Marten rolls his eyes. “I don’t know why you bother, Brenna. You know he can’t understand you.”

“I have to try, Widogast,” she snaps back at him. “This would be a lot easier if you guys would let him see a doctor, you know.”

Marten rolls his eyes again and shuts the door, leaving Felix alone with his thoughts. He takes in the brightness of his room. The sun is high in the sky and the walls are a brighter white than ever. Colors were all he knew when he was broken, but they were still washed out then. Everything is more intense now, including his memories. Especially his memories. Even in the white room, the flames dance around the edges of his vision. He isn’t used to this, used to _knowing_ and _remembering_ everything he’s done. He begins to shake and his knees crumple underneath him. Somewhere else in the asylum, a patient screams.

Felix shuts his eyes, then opens them again. Someone else is screaming, only not in the asylum, but in his head. The world is out of focus, spinning like a top, light and sound whirling together across a strange ballroom floor. His parents? He can hear them screaming again, ringing through his head. He claps his hands over his ears, but even that doesn’t block out the sound. Is this it? Is he breaking again? Is Sorrel’s gift wasted? But no. Slowly his vision clears and his parents’ screams fade into the distance. He’s lying in the fetal position on the floor of his room, hyperventilating. And suddenly he knows. That the memories of his parents’ sedition were false, and that Trent placed them in his head. Placed them in Eodwulf’s head. Placed them in Astrid’s head.

It’s so obvious now that he laughs, only the laugh comes out more like a hoarse gasp, followed by a fit of coughing. Of course the memories were false. Trent was, _is_ a gifted enchanter. Felix watched him charm and trick and trap so many using magic. Why did he consider himself immune? He _knew_ that he wasn’t immune. Trent had used his enchantment on him before. On Eodwulf and Astrid too. Of course he modified their memories.

Felix is shaking again, and crying softly. He’s cried often since coming here, though he was never previously able to name the cause of his emotions. _No, stop it_ , Felix thinks. _You can’t do this now. You can do this once you’re out. You can do this when you’re curled up in an inn in some podunk town where nobody,_ nobody _knows your name. You’ll be fine there. You’ll be fine then. You’ll have time to absorb everything that’s happened_. And he stops crying. He picks himself up off of the floor, sits himself on his bed, and begins to think.

 

 

The second hardest part of getting out of this place is getting out. Getting out of his room is easy. He need only call Brenna. He’s also allowed mostly free range of the asylum as long as she’s with him. But getting out of the front door? Nigh impossible. The guards aren’t frequently seen during the day, but they’re there, guarding every exit, making sure that no one leaves who isn’t supposed to. They know every name and every face. During the night they roam the halls, making sure that no patient leaves their room without an escort. If he wants to escape, Felix will need either a very good disguise or an alternative exit.

The hardest part of getting out of this place is staying out. Trent knows he’ll be a threat if he escapes. And Trent can find him easily. Or if Trent can’t, he’ll find someone else who can. Felix knows he’ll have to be on the run for a while after this, but without some way to mask his presence from divination, he’ll have to stay on the run for the rest of his life. Even if he leaves the country. Even if he leaves the continent. And he doesn’t want to do either of those things, not even as a last resort.

 

 

He already has an inkling of a plan when Brenna retrieves him for dinner. But there are some things he needs to do first.

First, he needs to see Sorrel. She’s sitting at the same table she sat at for lunch, eating her dinner with some hesitation. Felix makes a beeline for her as soon as he enters the cafeteria, not even bothering to go get his food from the kitchen.

Her face lights up as soon as she sees him, and at first he thinks she’s returned to lucidity. That illusion is shattered when she throws her arms around him and exclaims, “Caleb! You came back for me!”

Felix opens his mouth, then shuts it again.

“I knew you would,” Sorrel continues, still hugging him. “I knew you wouldn’t just leave me here in this awful country. How did you find me? That doesn’t matter.” She pulls away, a look of elation and total emptiness on her face. “We have to get out of here. We have to go back to Nicodranas. I can’t stand being here anymore, Caleb. When do we leave?”

The look of hope in her eyes is too much for Felix to bear, so he simply pulls her back into the hug.

“Oh my son,” she murmurs into his hair. “They told me you left me, that you abandoned your mother, or that you died, but I knew you hadn’t.”

“Sorrel,” Felix whispers. His voice is hoarse and cracked from disuse, and his accent is thicker than it was before. “I am not Caleb. I am not your son.”

Sorrel doesn’t respond. She’s crying, sobbing into Felix’s shoulder.

 

 

Every time he goes down to a meal after that, he sits next to Sorrel, waiting for her to come back to herself. But she doesn’t, and Felix doesn’t know if she ever will. He wants to learn so much from her, wants to know what exactly was wrong with him and how she saved him, how she even knew that he needed to be saved. On some days she’s quiet, on others, she rambles on about things that make no sense. The worst days are when she mistakes him for her son, for Caleb. He tries to correct her whenever Marten is looking the other way.

“I’m not your son, Sorrel,” he whispers. _And I don’t deserve to be_ , he adds in his head. If he could, he’d take Sorrel with him. Take her back to Nicodranas, where she keeps saying she wants to go. But he knows that adding another person to his escape plan would make it impossible to pull off, and it’s already almost an impossibility on its own.

 

 

The first step in his plan is magic. He’s relied on magic almost his whole life, and he knows that he won’t make it far without it. But now, when sits alone in his room, snapping his fingers and whispering the incantations under his breath, no magic will come. He knows that something in him is still damaged, it must be, but there’s also something else. Something blocking him. He can feel the slightest spark of it, igniting beneath his fingertips, but nothing comes out. He gets up and begins to search the room.

His room is bright and clean like always. One large window with bars on it. A wooden floor. A bed. A nightstand. Plain whitewashed walls with similarly whitewashed molding. Felix crawls under his bed and scans the floor. Nothing. No signs of magic. Nothing on the windowsill or behind the bars. The bars cover every window in the asylum, preventing anyone from escaping out of them. The lack of airflow makes things dreadfully hot in the summer. The bolts that keep the bars in place are rusted. He gives one a twist, and it wiggles slightly in his hand, but doesn’t come loose. He continues to check the room for signs of spellwork.

Nothing on or under his nightstand. Nothing on his bed frame. Nothing on the ceiling. If there was something on the ceiling, he spends so much time staring at it that he probably would’ve noticed it by now. He runs his hands along the molding that borders his floor.

And it gives. It shifts under his fingers near the corner, as if it had been partially peeled away. He pushes back the molding to reveal a small glowing sigil. His eyes widen, and he hurries over to each corner of the room. There’s the same crack between the molding in the wall in each corner, and there’s a similar sigil in each crack.

Anti-magic wards. Of course. Ikithon really leaves no stone unturned, no possibility unaccounted for. He knows this spell, and the wards are permanent. He sits on his floor in defeat. How will he escape without magic? He won’t be able to practice outside of his room without someone seeing, and then the jig will be up.

The gears are turning in his brain. He doesn’t need magic to escape. In fact, this could be an advantage if he plays his cards right. He needs the amulet that Marten wears. He’s figured that out by now. Most of the higher ranking members of the Cerberus Assembly wear them, to prevent them from being located by Xhorhasian spies, though it’s more a symbol of status than anything else. He doesn’t know how many powerful diviners Xhorhas even has. Before, back in the cottage, back in the Academy, he looked forward to the day when he would earn one of his own. If he can lure Marten into his room, they’ll be on a level playing field, and Felix can easily ambush him and steal his amulet.

 

 

The amulet solves one problem. He’s still working on the other problem when Brenna takes him outside. She takes him to the courtyard around once a week, for some fresh air and as much exercise as he can muster. Could muster. The more responsive patients go outside every day. The more violent (or at least apparently more violent) never go outside.

Sorrel is sitting on one of the benches, lost in one of the caverns of her mind. Felix has accepted that the Sorrel who saved him isn’t coming back. It’s been a week, and she hasn’t said anything that makes sense. Whatever happened to her is permanent, or at least semi-permanent. He sits down next to her. She doesn’t react to his presence. She’s having a quiet day, then. On days like this, she almost reminds Felix of himself when he was broken.

A minute later, she turns to him. She reaches out and gently caresses his face, like a mother would her crying child.

“You,” she says. Not so quiet today after all. “You’re in me.” It’s the most intelligible thing she’s said since she collapsed on the table in front of him, but he still can’t tell what she means. “Pieces of you.”

She turns back away from him and her eyes go unfocused, as if she’s staring at something far off in the distance. Something that he can’t see.

A few moments pass, and Felix scans the rest of the courtyard. The staff have had trouble getting stuff to grow here. Everyone’s always walking everywhere, stomping out all of the plant life and turning the soil into sand. The only thing that’s managed to stick it out is a gnarled river birch whose peeling bark has been picked clean. Felix admits that he’s picked at the birch himself before. Things get boring when your imagination has been quashed and you can’t understand language. The other patients are milling around, some talking, some playing with a rubber ball, and some just sitting or standing, staring at nothing. He’s keenly aware of the gaze of Brenna and Marten on his back, and he stiffens automatically in response.

He almost jumps off the bench when Sorrel says, “Ink.” He looks at her and she speaks again, “Light. Hydrangea. Twelve.”

Felix places his hand on Sorrel’s shoulder, but she doesn’t react.

“Ink. Light. Hydrangea. Twelve,” she repeats, slowly, with long, contemplative pauses in between each word. “Ink. Light. Hydrangea. Twelve.”

The words are nonsense, they must be, and yet something about them is familiar to Felix. Painfully familiar. _What happened to Sorrel?_ He stares at the ground and goes back to considering his escape plan, while Sorrel continues repeating the four words over and over and over again. At the end of his recess period, Sorrel is still saying the words. Her orderly leads her away. As he sees Brenna marching over towards him, he kneels onto the ground and scoops up two fistfuls of sand.

 

 

Over the next few days, he collects three things: water, salt, and sand. He stacks cups of water around his room until either Brenna notices or the kitchen complains, forcing Brenna to notice.

“Again, Felix?” she asks with dismay as she picks her way around the full cups of water that litter his floor. She shakes her head, puzzled. “You’re not even drinking them.”

When she harvests the cups from under his bed, she finds a small pile of sand there, too. He’s used most of the sand that he’s collected over the past two weeks, but a small bit remains. “How in Baator did this get under here?” Brenna remarks, picking up a pinch of sand. “Did you do this?” she asks, looking over at Felix.

He stares at her dumbly.

She sighs. “No matter. I’ll get a custodian.”

The salt he puts in the water, some of the water. He has less salt than water, after all. Some of it, though, he applies directly to the area of focus alongside the sand.

It takes a few weeks, but the water, salt, and sand all do the trick. And then Felix knows that it’s time to escape. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stole "Ink. Light. Hydrangea. Twelve." from the saddest episode of Stranger Things.


	3. Hydrangea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now the thrilling conclusion! Sorry for taking so long to get this up. I've had it written for a while so there's no excuse.

_ Ink _ . When Felix decided to apply to the Soltryce Academy, his father gifted him a brand new pot of ink. It took all their spare money to be able to afford it. It was well made, and colored a rich purple. It flowed onto the paper like a dream. 

Felix sat down and tried to write his entrance essay with it. He couldn’t think of what to write. It was as if every clever thought he’d ever had had just flown out of his brain. He tried to start with, “In the Age—“ but his hands were shaking so badly that he spilled the dish he’d poured of the ink all over the page. He’d learned not to cry over spilt milk, or spilt ink in this case, but he couldn’t help but get choked up at this. The ink was expensive, and the paper wasn’t exactly cheap either. He hadn’t even mailed in his admissions packet and he was ruining things. 

His father, who was leaning over him to watch him write, gently ruffled his hair and poured him a new dish of ink. He placed a fresh sheet of paper on the desk. “It’s okay,” his father said. “You can do this.”

Felix squeezed back the tears and nodded at his father. He began to write again, his hand still shaking but not quite so badly. “In the Age of Arcanum,” he wrote, “mages thought that they could bend reality. They were wrong. Everyone knows this. But what no one realizes is that the ability to bend reality is possible, but not in the way the mages thought.” He glanced up at his father, who was beaming down at him, a look of unmitigated pride in his eyes. 

 

 

Felix’s hands shake as he twists the first bolt that holds the bars that cover his window. His plan had worked its charm. The increased humidity and salinity in air of the room from the cups of water combined with the abrasion from the salt and sand rusted the bolts around the windows so that they’re easily loosened. The make a soft scraping noise as he pulls them out of their sockets, but it’s barely audible. Not enough to draw suspicion. He lifts the bars away from his window and opens it. The fall air is icy on his face, but fresh and clean. So different from the stale air in the asylum. 

Felix places the bars next to his bed and yanks his sheet off of it. Brenna has gone home, and now Marten is the only one in charge of him. Him and the guards. Felix places his ear to the outer edge of the wall and listens. Marten is snoring outside. Loudly. Felix almost feels sorry for him. He must not get any sleep. He hears footsteps beyond the walls. They stop, and he hears the voice of a guard say, “Widogast! What’s the Assembly paying you for?” Marten’s snoring stops abruptly. The footsteps resume and continue until they fade. It’s well after lights out, and Felix has memorized the guard routes. It’s time to put this into action. 

 

 

_ Light.  _ Sometimes, at the Academy, he, Astrid, and Eodwulf would sneak out of their rooms after lights out. Astrid learned to pick locks from her older brother, or else one of them would cast  _ knock _ , and they could break into any room on campus. They would dig through their professors’ research, or practice spells with components that were usually locked away. Sometimes, though, they would just hide in the janitorial closets, talking and laughing all night long. 

That night was one such night. “She just snores so loud,” Astrid complained. “And she’s always getting up to use the toilet. Keeps me up all night.” 

“Maybe you should be using this period of time to sleep,” Eodwulf suggested.

Astrid shrugged. “You guys are too much fun. Daya’s no fun at all. I try to talk to her during the day, but she’s got her nose in books all the time. A bit like you, Felix,” she said, elbowing him gently in the ribs. “I never get to see you during the day. We’re always in class or doing homework or whatever. And we live on opposite sides of the building.” 

“It sucks,” Eodwulf sighed. “But we’re gonna be the best wizards in the Empire. I think it’s worth it.”

Felix hadn’t really been paying attention. He’d been working on a small ball of clay, shaping it into a cat. 

“What’re you working on there, Felix?” Eodwulf asked, resting his head on Felix’s shoulder. 

“Watch,” Felix said. He placed the small clay cat on the floor in the middle of the three of them, then produced a small rock from his pocket. He muttered an incantation, and the rock became a cat. It was barely visible in the light coming from under the closet door. 

Astrid snatched the stone cat and examined it. “Shit, Felix!” she exclaimed. “Where’d you pick up that one?” 

“Professor Lorenthal taught it to me,” Felix said proudly.  

“She hates me,” Eodwulf said, taking the cat from Astrid. “She won’t even answer my questions when I raise my hand in class. You’re her favorite. You’re  _ everyone’s  _ favorite.” 

“You two would be my favorites, if I were a professor here,” Felix said. “And who knows? Maybe I will be.”

Astrid rolled her eyes. “That’s all you’re aiming for? Really, Felix? A professor? You’re the smartest kid here; you could be the leader of the Assembly, easy.”

“If Martinent Da’leth ever kicks it. Seems like he’ll never die,” Eodwulf remarked. 

“True,” Astrid admitted. “But still, you don’t want to join the Assembly? I’m going to, if I can.”

“I’m sure you can,” Felix assured her. 

“Then I’m going to. I’m going to join the Assembly and then seduce a prince and marry into the royal family and become the most powerful woman, if not the most powerful person, in the Empire,” she said. 

Eodwulf burst out laughing, falling against the back wall of the closet. “Set the bar higher, maybe, Astrid,” he giggled. 

“What?” Astrid asked indignantly. “It’s a perfectly achievable goal.” 

Felix couldn’t help but laugh too. “You know what, for anyone else it wouldn’t be, but because it’s you, I believe it.”

“You need to stop flattering her,” Eodwulf said, poking Felix on the nose. “You’re just making her ego go to her head.” 

Astrid rolled her eyes again. “Whatever. Anyway, Felix, you learn any other cool spells?” 

“Yeah, I learned this one from a book I found in the Professor Hyla’s office the other day,” he said. He held up the stone cat, made a few gestures over it, and whispered, “Play,” into it. The cat began to move, walking in circles around his palm before leaping up his arm and onto his shoulder and nuzzling into his neck. 

“Woah,” Eodwulf breathed. “Can I hold it?” 

“Sure,” Felix said, and held the cat out to Eodwulf. The cat touched its nose to Eodwulf’s, and Felix smiled. 

They were all so enamored with the cat of living stone that they didn’t hear the footsteps outside. The door opened, and light flooded the closet. Eodwulf froze and the cat clinked to the ground. Standing in the doorway was a man, but he wasn’t a custodian, or another student, or even a professor. It was someone they all recognized, but had never met. It was Trent Ikithon, the Archmage of Civil Influence. 

They were terrified out of their minds. What was he doing here? He was one of the most powerful mages in the Empire. Would they get in trouble? No one said anything. They were all frozen. The cat wandered up to the Archmage’s foot and pawed at his shoe. 

And then Trent Ikithon smiled. He picked up the cat. “This is quite a trick,” he said, admiration in his voice. “Who did this?”

“Me,” Felix said, raising his hand shyly. 

“Well, well, well, young man. That is quite impressive.” With Trent’s words, Felix’s fear melted away. But Felix learned later that he should’ve stayed afraid. 

 

 

The room is completely dark except for the moonlight streaming in the open window. Felix stands in the darkened corner of his room, poised behind the door. The next guard won’t be by for another fifteen minutes. He leans over and raps on the door softly. No sound comes from outside. He raps again, louder this time. He hears Marten shuffling outside, but the doorknob doesn’t turn. He raps again, even louder. 

“Shut up in there!” Marten yells, banging on the door in return. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

Felix knocks on the door again, louder still. 

“Fuck’s sake,” Marten mutters. “You better cut that shit out or else I’m gonna come in there, and you’re not gonna like if I come in there.”

Felix pounds on the door with all his might, then quickly ducks back into the corner behind the door, clutching his sheet, white-knuckled in his hands. He chews on the scar tissue on the inside of his mouth. 

“Alright,” Marten says, then Felix hears the lock on his door click and Marten storms in. 

Upon not immediately seeing Felix, Marten pauses in the center of the room. “What the—?”

Felix slams the door and then bolts at Marten, throwing the sheet over his head before tackling him to the ground. 

 

 

_ Hydrangea _ . Light filtered in through the dusty window of Trent’s cottage. The place was beautiful. It was surrounded by green fields full of wildflowers for miles. The house itself was painted blue with pale yellow shutters. Its chimney was made of brick, and most days, smoke billowed out from it, suggesting home and comfort. In another time, it would’ve been picturesque. Felix stared out the window at the hydrangea bush. Its beautiful purple flowers swayed gently in the breeze. The screams of the spy filled the cottage. 

Eodwulf was in charge of the questioning that day. He threw out a million questions that the spy didn’t know the answer to, that they knew he didn’t know the answer to. Still Astrid punished him for his helpless ignorance, slicing off chunks of his flesh that splattered to the ground like raw steaks on a butcher’s counter. Felix had done both jobs before: the torturing and the questioning. They all had. Trent stood in the corner of the room, his face unreadable.

Felix tuned out the scene around him. He did that whenever it was his turn to sit out. Torture was easy. Watching torture was almost impossible. Only Trent managed to do it passively. 

“Felix, were you paying attention?” Trent’s voice wrenched him out of his thoughts. 

“Of course, sir,” Felix replied. He pulled his gaze away from the hydrangea bush. The spy lay dead on the floor. 

 

 

Marten fights his head out from under the sheet as Felix attempts to clamber on top of him. 

“You—you’re—” Marten begins before breaking off and starting an incantation. Nothing happens. 

“Yes, me,” Felix hisses. Marten’s eyes widen as Felix grabs him by the collar and sends the two of them barrel rolling across the floor. The roll ends with Marten’s chest pinned under Felix’s legs. Marten tries to yell, but he’s cut off by Felix’s hand clamping down on his throat, so that the yell fizzles out into a high, raspy squeak. Even if Marten had managed to get the yell out, it wouldn’t have mattered. The asylum is filled with screams at night, and this one would’ve been lost in the din. Felix presses down on Marten’s throat with all of the strength he can muster, which isn’t a lot, but with his knees compressing Marten’s chest, his hands on his throat, and Marten’s arms still tangled in the sheet, there’s nothing that Marten can do. Felix feels Marten’s windpipe shift and buckle under his hands and he thinks that out of all the people he’s killed, Marten might be the first one who actually deserves it. 

“Please,” Marten manages to gasp out.

“No,” Felix replies, pressing down harder. 

Marten’s gagging, and his wild gestures are getting more and more subdued. Finally, his eyes roll back into his head, and he goes still. Felix releases Marten’s throat and sits on his chest for a moment, absorbing what he just did. He killed Marten. He  _ throttled  _ him. And now he’s going to take Marten’s amulet and escape from this wretched place. Felix snatches the amulet and fastens it around his own neck before tucking it into his tunic. He stands up, taking in Marten’s lifeless body one last time. His keeper is dead, and he is free. 

 

 

_ Twelve _ . It was midnight. Felix knew this because he tended to know these things, but also because of the clock tower in town. It rang with the time every hour.  _ Bong _ . The first ring of the bell clued him in to the fact that the time must have rolled over to midnight. With Astrid and Eodwulf’s help, pushed his parents’ cart against the front door of his house. 

_ Bong _ . He looked to his right, over at Astrid. When her parents had been choking on the floor, she’d stared coldly down at them, showing no emotion. But now her eyes were different; dead, not cold. Some kind of life drained from them. 

_ Bong.  _ He looked to his left at Eodwulf. Eodwulf’s plan had been quicker. He had summoned a knife into his hand from Gods-knew-where and slit his parents’ throats as they slept. He’d done it in less than a minute. Felix, Astrid, and Trent hadn’t even been in the room. Eodwulf had simply walked out of his parents’ bedroom a little bit later, the knife in his hand glowing faintly and dripping with blood, his eyes cast with a shadow of horror. Eodwulf was focused on the cart now, and the shadow was mostly gone. 

_ Bong _ . The cart was in position against the door to Felix’s house. They’d already filled it with straw from his barn. The horses had whinnied when they saw him, and he’d shushed them. He’d had to consciously prevent himself from going over and patting them on their velvety noses.

_ Bong _ .  _ Fire bolt _ was a simple spell. He’d learned it even before he went to the academy. He’d practiced it on a bush in front of his house, and had almost set the whole front yard on fire. His mother had scolded him for it, but there had been a pride in her voice as she did it. 

_ Bong _ . He whispered the incantation and flicked his finger at the hay in the cart. It came alight instantly. He was so sure.  _ Bong _ . The rest of the cart caught just as easily, the fire consuming the wood.  _ Bong.  _ The fire began to spread to the grass surrounding the cart, forcing him and his friends to step back a little bit.  _ Bong _ . As the fire spread to the house, climbing up the walls, they backed away from it to watch it burn. Trent waited on the side of the road.  _ Bong _ . Felix looked over at the home of the closest neighbor, a house a little ways down the road. The lights weren’t on in their windows yet, but they might be soon.  _ Bong _ . The whole house was on fire, and smoke billowed up into the pitch black sky.  _ Bong _ . A banging came from inside of the front door, which was blocked by the cart’s charred remains. Felix could hear his mother screaming, “Help! Please, let us out!” and suddenly he wasn’t so sure anymore. 

Twelve tolls of the clock, two dead parents, and one broken son. 

 

 

“I’m sorry, Sorrel,” Felix whispers as he clambers out of his window and into the branches of the chestnut tree, its leaves colored bright yellow, orange, and fiery red. It shifts under his weight, but it holds him as he climbs down. The night air is frigid, and hurts his lungs as he hikes over the hill that lies to the north of the asylum. 

The laundry hangs on the line there, blowing in the wind. “I’m sorry, Astrid. I’m sorry, Eodwulf,” he says to it. His words are swept away by the icy bluster. Soon it will be too cold to hang the laundry out here, but for now, here it is. This is the final step of Felix’s plan. He needs something to cover or replace his asylum uniform, or else he’ll be caught the moment he steps back into civilization. He also needs something warm, because even with new clothes, he can’t risk going into any towns without putting some distance between him and the asylum. And that means a lot of cold nights in the woods. 

He marches over to the lines and begins to examine the clothes there. It’s mostly more uniforms, but there are a few pieces of street clothing, which have been taken off of new patients, washed, and are waiting to be returned to said patients’ next of kin. Nothing fits him except for a coat that’s seen better days, so that’s all he takes. At least it’s warm. He shrinks down into it and says, “I’m sorry, mother and father,” though he knows it’s not enough. That it will never be enough. 


End file.
